our charming country home.
Who is that pretty girl in your box, Mr. Fairchild?"

Miss Eschelle had her glass pointed at Margaret as I gave the desired
information.

"How innocent!" she murmured. "And she's quite in the style--isn't she,
Mr. Lyon?" she asked, turning about, her sweet mobile face quite the
picture of what she was describing. "We are all innocent in these days."

"It is a very good style," I said.

"Isn't it becoming?" asked the girl, making her dark eyes at once merry
and demure.

Mr. Lyon was looking intently at the opposite box, and a slight shade
came over his fine face. "Ah, I see!"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Eschelle," he said, after a second, "I hardly
know which to admire most, the beauty, or the wit, or the innocence of
the American women."

"There is nothing so confusing, though, as the country innocence," the
girl said, with the most natural air; "it never knows where to stop."

"You are too absurd, Carmen," her mother interposed; "as if the town
girl did!"

"Well, mamma, there is authority for saying that there is a time for
everything, only one must be in the fashion, you know."

Mr. Lyon looked a little dubious at this turn of the talk; Mr. Henderson
was as evidently amused at the girl's acting. I said I was glad to see
that goodness was in fashion.

"Oh, it often is. You know we were promised a knowledge of good as
well as evil. It depends upon the point of view. I fancy, now, that
Mr. Henderson tolerates the good--that is the reason we get on so well
together; and Mr. Lyon tolerates the evil--that's the reason he likes
New York. I have almost promised him that I will have a mission school."

The girl looked quite capable of it, or of any other form of devotion.
Notwithstanding her persistent banter, she had a most inviting innocence
of manner, almost an ingenuousness, that well became her exquisite
beauty. And but for a tentative daring in her talk, as if the gentle
creature were experimenting as to how far one could safely go, her
innocence might have seemed that of ignorance.

It came out in the talk that Mr. Lyon had been in Washington for a week,
and would return there later on.

"We had a claim on him," said Mrs. Eschelle, "for his kindness to us
in London, and we are trying to convince him that New York is the real
capital."

"Unfortunately," added Miss Eschelle, looking up in Mr. Lyon's face,
"he visited Brandon first, and you seem to have bewitched him with your
s